Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Robert O’Brien Nominee: Dennis Prager

I imagine this is the sort of moronic pablum that one can expect from Dennis Prager’s “university.”

Ever since I attended college, I have been convinced that either “studies” confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken.

There is, of course, no such thing as common sense. It is nothing more than a vague label used to cover all the things one expects to be true for no apparent reason. And many, perhaps most, of the things that people justify as true by referring to “common sense” are, in fact, entirely wrong.

“Ever since I attended college, I have been convinced that either “studies” confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken.”
Allow me to convert from wingnuttia:
Ever since I was in college I noticed that knowledge confirms what I believe and therefore is true, or not and then is flat out wrong and evul.
It’s got a formal name Dennis: ‘Confirmation bias’.
If it confirms what you already believe it’s probably not true, unless shown to be otherwise (and even then it only improves the likelyhood of being true). – Dingo

Gee, then, according to Mr. Prager’s hypothesis, quantum mechanics, a theory that defies common sense, must be incorrect. Considering that quantum mechanics has, perhaps, the greatest explanatory power of any scientific theory ever proposed, that would take an extraordinary amount of chutzpah on his part, especially from someone whose knowledge of physics is, in all probability, virtually non-existent.

Nope- I’m squarely with Prager on this one. For example: anyone who believes in his God is stupid, ignorant, deluded, or some combination of the three. If that God existed, He would prevent earthquakes, and also He would be able to microwave a burrito so hot that even He couldn’t eat it. There’s really no need for any further consideration of the matter: it’s just common sense.

Aw, poor DenDen. Does them makes precious learn something he thinks he already knows, and better than anyone who actually knows their shit about the subject rather than relying on a Bronze Age genocidal manual?

Reminds me of what a professor said to one of the fundie nitwits in class, after the nut said he was quitting the class because the professor had a “liberal agenda”:

“My only agenda is to loosen your tenacious grip on stupidity, not to reinforce it.”

The professor got a smackdown from the college for it, mostly because he refused to take it back.

Pretty much everything we’ve learned about the universe since we left the savanna has been counterintuitive. Round Earth, heliocentrism, continental drift, atomic theory, germ theory of disease, evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics… all deeply counterintuitive and unexpected. Frankly, in areas we haven’t tested or have no experience in – my money’s always on the answer being something we didn’t expect.

Even long experience is no guarantee. People have been deeply and fundamentally wrong about their own bodies – Aristotle taught that the brain was basically a cooling system for the heart, and educated people believed that for centuries.

I used to occasionally hear Prager on the radio. His signature soundbite for a study with which he disagreed was “Those researchers must have been smoking crack.” On the other hand, he applied not one iota of critical thinking to a study that confirmed his biases; I remember one that he cited as proving his belief in vast differences between men and women as well as the ickiness of gay men; it supposedly showed that the “average gay urban male” reported 1000 different lifetime sexual partners, while the “average gay woman” reported 10. That just doesn’t pass the giggle test.